Discussion point: Question 3 (enum usage in Embedded C)

Did you use enum in your embedded programs? Is it preferable to use enum?

Response:

• enum is used in Embedded C programming
• enum is a user defined data type
• enum helps in generating sequential numbers for a given list of items
• Because of sequential number assignment changing a initial element value shall change all the corresponding elements in enum which is advantage in some scenarios
• mainly used in generating the error logs
• Meaningful description of error logs helps designer to debug the program easily
• enum supports only integer constants
• The biggest use of enum is when developing state machines

Example implementation:

typedef enum {

CMD_ERROR = 1,

PATH_ERROR,

FILE_NOT_FOUND

} ErrorCodes;

(or)

enum ErrorCodes { 

CMD_ERROR = 1,

PATH_ERROR,

FILE_NOT_FOUND

} ;

(or)

enum ErrorCodes { CMD_ERROR = 1 } ;

(or)

enum ErrorCodes;

The same error logs can be represented by preprocessor directive #define as well as structure.